”Just when he became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started ”Just when he became infatuated with roses, he couldn’t remember. Much as with one’s taste in art, music and other pleasures mature, what had started as an amusing dalliance had developed over many years to become a passionate love affair.”
It is interesting to think about the things that we have loved so long that we have forgotten the source of our infatuation. Some of those things predate our love for a person, except for maybe the affections we might have held for our parents and siblings. Of course, over our rambling lives, we collect new proclivities, new endearments, new delights. For me, I have always adored tulips. Because we didn’t have daffodils, they were the first flower to emerge in our gardens on the farm. I love the shape of them, the vibrant colors, and as I got older, I became fascinated by their history and the madness their beauty caused in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, leading to the term Tulip Mania, as nearly everyone in Dutch society was caught up in the speculation on rare tulip bulbs. My love for roses came later. Like Lawrence Kingston, I don’t remember when I first became infatuated with roses, but it has been a long relationship that will endure until I become worm fodder...hopefully for my own garden, but then there are laws that frown upon such disposing of one's final remains.
When Kingston gets the call from Jamie Gibson, the American who bafflingly inherits Wickersham Priory, he isn’t sure if he wants to accept the task for which she wants to hire him. Committing to a garden, especially one that will require so much work, is not a promise given lightly. Wickersham Priory has been overgrown for decades, and parting the foliage of this garden will be like parting the negligee of a lover for which one has longed to caress for what feels like eons. There is always the chance as well that, once Kingston has fallen in love with the gardens of Wickersham Priory, the owner may run out of funds to continue or decide that his services are no longer needed.
It is not an easy decision, but then like with that lover whom we pine to make ours, he decides he must take the chance and plunge ahead.
There are a plethora of mysteries being uncovered about Wickersham Priory. The garden is revealing her treasures, a buried potting shed, a reflecting pool, a Victorian greenhouse, a chapel. All buried beneath decades of growth. It does not take long for nature to take things back once we stop trimming, plucking, cutting, and training the foliage that expands quickly to take what space they can grab. The mysteries are not all in the garden. What happened to the books detailing the life of the garden, the plans, those realized and those dreamed about? Who is the Frenchman who shows up demanding paintings that were in the possession of Major James Grenville Ryder, Jamie’s mysterious benefactor? There is no discernable connection between Ryder and Gibson, so why did he leave his estates to her? And whose bloody bones, well no actual blood left, are residing at the bottom of the chapel well? The mysteries continue to emerge, going back all the way to the dissolutions in 1540 when Wickersham Priory was seized by the crown.
These mysteries are the sort of thing that Kingston, despite his vast responsibilities with restoring the gardens, can not leave alone. The further he digs, the more baffling the roots of these puzzles become. Jamie though is becoming less thrilled about discovering the truth the more Kingston becomes caught in the brambles of the enigmas. There is a real fear that what they discover may lead to the revelation of something that will cost her the dream of what she intends to make of Wickersham Priory.
Despite his employer’s wishes, Kingston can not quit pulling on the strings of what little he knows. He must have resolutions even if the truth is starker than anyone wants to know.
Anthony Eglin was inspired by the Herculean effort that Tim Smit accomplished in restoring the gardens of Heligan. Every day was a treasure trove as elusive and rare plants were discovered hiding beneath the brambles. To restore order and beauty to something that has become buried beneath the weight of neglect must have been a most rewarding experience. Eglin does a great job of letting us peek at some of the process. If I had any complaints about this book, I wish he’d spent more time showing us the process of bringing a garden back to life. Hopefully, Kingston will continue to work on Wickersham Priory in the next book in the series.
The perfect book to further inspire my own gardening adventures this spring.
”Standing shoulder height in front of them was a rose bush, thick with thorns and silky dark green leaves. It was covered with blooms the size of tenn”Standing shoulder height in front of them was a rose bush, thick with thorns and silky dark green leaves. It was covered with blooms the size of tennis balls--dozens of them. They were plump and perfectly formed.
They were blue.
A brilliant blue. Not lavender or mauve, but an electric sapphire blue.
Kate edged closer and knelt until her face was inches from one of the blooms. She gripped it lightly and gently tugged one of the petals.
‘Oh--my--dear--God!’ she said, quietly. ‘It is real!’”
For those who may not know, a blue rose does not exist in nature, and so far, it doesn’t exist in a greenhouse laboratory either. They can make lavender roses that have blue tints, and in the right lighting, at a bar late at night, after a couple of tall martinis, one might believe he has just had a saucy conversation with a seventy year old woman, who looks twenty-five, holding a sapphire rose.
And people would believe you about the seventy year old woman looking twenty-five (It is always possible that Helen Mirren is hanging out in your local bar and thinks you are the sexist man there. The lighting is that good, erhh bad!), but they would not believe she held a sapphire rose.
Alex and Kate Sheppard have just recently bought the grand old manor called The Parsonage with its extensive walled gardens. They are yuppies or yippies or whatever young, preppy, upwardly mobile couples are called these days. She runs a fussy antique store, and he is a handsome, edgy architect.They would be people that most of us would love to have as friends. They know enough about this and that to be good hosts and good conversationalists. Their perfect world is about to explode into intrigue, murder, and deception.
The worldwide rose industry is worth billions, not millions per year, but billions. The acres and acres of roses that are grown each year to be sent to enhance the lives of gardeners all over the world is staggering to contemplate. Large companies are struggling to compete with mega large companies. Getting your hands on a legitimate blue rose would take a struggling company to the financial stratosphere. Let’s just say, desperate or even just immoral people will do almost anything to get their hands on a blue rose. The recklessness and audacity ratchets up when any of the companies vying for the rose think about what will happen if their competitor gets the rose before they do.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, the expert that Alex and Kate call is Dr. Lawrence Kingston. He is a botany and gardening specialist who is routinely called upon for his opinion by the highest garden authorities in the world. One would be hard pressed to come up with a subject matter that Kingston doesn’t have an opinion about, whether it be gardening, world politics, or history. He is a man interested in everything. He is a fine man to have in your corner, but beware; if the alcohol continues to flow deep into the night, so will his stories and pontifications.
I find him fascinating. Of course, Alex and Kate do, too, but maybe in smaller doses.
It is interesting for me to read reviews of people who don’t like him, think he is a smarty pants, which really surprises me because, as readers, don’t we aspire to know more? Isn’t that why we read? Isn’t Kingston a font of knowledge just waiting to be tapped? I do understand being looked down someone else’s nose does get a bit old and having to listen all the time instead of talking is not most people’s cup of tea, but for me, the few times I’ve had the opportunity to meet a person like Kingston, I’ve just kept my mouth shut, except to gently nudge him in the proper direction to talk about something I wish to know more about.
Besides the character of Kingston, I also really like that all the chapters begin with quotes about roses. This is one of my favorites: ”Won’t you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you”---Richard Sheridan. Ahhh, if he says this to a young lady, he is not only smooth but also informing her that his garden has a hold on his heart, too.
Will the garden approve of her? How will she look among his roses?
I’ve been watching quite a bit of Monty Don recently. I’ve enjoyed traveling with him around the world to see these simply stunning gardens. I’ve also enjoyed his shows based in his own garden at Longmeadow. He has inspired me to begin contemplating my own backyard and the numerous possibilities for turning it into a gardening paradise.
I’ve been infected with gardener’s dreams.
So it is due to Monty Don that I decided to track down a gardening mystery. I wanted a series sprinkled with all that geeky gardening guidance, with a bit of skullduggery, and a twisty gardening conundrum. Anthony Eglin provided me with plenty of what I was looking for. I definitely plan to see where he sends my man Kingston next. Somewhere I hope a cup of Earl Grey and a shot or two of Scotch can readily be had.
”A wave of intense sadness soaked through me. I felt completely alone. I sat quietly for a minute or two gathering myself, unable to move, letting the”A wave of intense sadness soaked through me. I felt completely alone. I sat quietly for a minute or two gathering myself, unable to move, letting the storm pass. All day I filmed amongst the seeds, knowing that I was not well, knowing that this was not good, knowing that if I let go, I might never put the pieces back together again.
I drove home, a grown man sobbing on the motorway, and got back to the empty house. I rang Sarah and from the other side of the country she lovingly talked me down, like a flight controller bringing a flaming plane safely in to land.
Something breaks. Something shatters, and it takes a long while to put it all together again.”
Monty Don is perfectly content whenever he is working in his home garden. It is when he is away from it too long or the winter months make it impossible for him to putter as he likes among the flowers, the vegetables, and the trees that his crippling depression, always lurking like a beast in the shadows, seizes the opportunity to storm the cells deep in the dungeons of his mind and release the creatures of self-doubt, dissatisfaction, recrimination, and lassitude and allow them to run freely through his mind, overturning pots, tearing up rose bushes, and smashing down fences.
I equate it with what would happen to me if I were not allowed to read books for several months out of the year. What kind of wreck would I be once I emerged from such a jail sentence? It would not be pretty.
I am late in finding Monty Don. He has had a long and successful career without ever crossing before my path. I am zooming around Netflix, looking for something fresh and different to watch, when I find Monty Don’s French Gardens. I’m always on the lookout for a travel show with a host old enough to be interesting to listen to. Those plethora of millennial hosted travel shows are like being assaulted by the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. I am, obviously, not their target audience. I’m not far into episode one of French Gardens before I find myself becoming enamored with this awkward, brilliant, caring, square jawed Englishman who is not only, with a few words, making me care about gardens on the other side of the world, but also awakening in me a desire to get back into gardening in my backyard here in Kansas.
I blow through French Gardens and then find his series on Italian Gardens. I have now started watching an episode of Gardeners’ World several times a week, while drinking a cup of Earl Grey and ruminating on what I’m learning from Don that can be applied to my own feeble efforts here in the States.
He wrote this book with his wife, Sarah, and I must say I enjoyed her contributions as much as I did Monty’s . Here is a good example.
”I like the way that at this time of year the garden fills its spaces on its own. The poppies grow inches every day and marigolds seed everywhere. The garden becomes almost unbearably beautiful. Every second is precious. But time goes so fast and I can hardly breathe with the pace and excitement of it. I keep thinking, this is it. This is the moment.”
The interplay between what he writes and then what she writes adds depth to the story of their garden. For they are a team effort. They began designing jewelry together, and their company became wildly successful, only to have the company fall upon its own bejewelled sword when the economy went bust. That part of their life is reflected in the section of their property they now call The Jewel Garden.
It is pure chance that this is the first Monty Don book I read. I found it for $7.98 on clearance, and really, I have to believe that the book goddesses were looking out for me. It gives me some much needed background on Monty and his wife. It is filled with lovely pictures of their garden, as well as themselves. It proved to be the perfect diversion from a winter storm outside my window that was adding layers of ice to my trees and bushes every hour. The ice was beautiful and mystical, but potentially destructive. I felt strangely peaceful wandering around in their spring and summer gardens, while occasionally looking up to contemplate the changing weight load of ice on the precious limbs of my trees.
The book and the storm all turned out fine.
”The year flows through the garden like a river that brings you back somewhere near to where you started. But by the end of February there is an atavistic, irresistible urge to be outside. Half an hour of warm sunshine and a drying wind in February can wipe away weeks of December gloom. As we get older we realise that the days are more precious and half-moments of intense joy are more valuable than jewels.”
Loading...
